Indiana Wants It

This sounds very much like something dreamed up by the late Hoosier Kurt Vonnegut expressly so that the late Hoosier J. Doghouse Riley would have something on which to comment. Either that, or Happy Hour came early in the Indiana state government.

The seven statewide elected officials can use state property for campaign purposes, so long as they approve a policy statement authorizing themselves to do so. That's the conclusion of an inspector general's report approved Thursday by the State Ethics Commission, which imposed a $5,000 fine on Republican Tony Bennett, the former state superintendent of public instruction, not for campaigning using state resources but for failing to first give himself written permission.

So, using state property for your own campaign purposes is bad and wrong unless you first use your public office to write a rule that says using state property for your own campaign purposes is good and right. It think this would be a very fine rule to be applied to everyone, especially those of us who would like to take, say, a Ferrari off the lot. I would like to be able to give myself formal permission to do this.

"I've learned a valuable lesson that I can offer to others, not as an excuse, but as an explanation," Bennett said. "Without well-drafted policies in place that expressly allow the limited use of state property for political activity by elected officials, all present and future Indiana elected officials are at risk of inadvertent violations."

"Inadvertent," as we have learned from our study of the activities of the all-too-human, but curiously error-prone, heroes of our intelligence community, is an interesting word.

Indiana Inspector General David Thomas determined that during Bennett's 2012 re-election bid, he held joint staff meetings between Department of Education employees and his campaign team in Bennett's Statehouse office. Bennett also used state-owned and maintained calendar software to track official and campaign events on a consolidated calendar, as well as received and responded to political emails from his state account, according to the inspector general's report. In addition, Bennett directed DOE staff following his defeat to compile a personal contact list that he could use in his new job as Florida Education Commissioner. The final list included contacts from three campaign lists "The 5000," "The Big Hitter List" and the "Red Meat List" that were stored on a state server, the report said.

For all this to be "inadvertent," Mr. Bennett either would have had to have been ignorant of the rule, period, or confused as to which office he was using for a meeting and which computers he was using for his e-mail. Also, I am very disappointed not to be on the Red Meat List.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.